Awards and grants

Research funding worth £48 million was won by the University last year in the arts, humanities, social sciences, science, technology, engineering and medicine. Some examples of our most recent research grant awards are listed here.

Pioneering work in services research

Professor Irene Ng, Associate Professor in Marketing and Head of Postgraduate Studies, was awarded a prestigious fellowship from the Advanced Institute of Management Research (AIM) in March 08. The award is for Professor Ng’s pioneering work in services research. AIM is a UK leader in the field of management research, bringing academics together with business, public sector and policy thinkers in order to develop and deliver research of a world class standard which has an immediate and significant impact on management practice. The fellowship awarded is part of a new initiative funded by the UK’s Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC).

Competition, choice and governance in the UK Audit Market

Dr Kevin McMeeking, Senior Lecturer in Accounting at the University of Exeter Business School has won a grant from the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Scotland to research competition, choice and governance in the UK Audit Market. The research will investigate how different legal forms of ownership in accounting firms are perceived, the perceived need to reduce the gap between the Big Four accounting firms and the rest, and how recommendations proposed by the Market Participants Group are perceived by accounting firms, company chairmen, regulators, shareholders, analysts, banks and government.

£286,274 by the Natural Environment Research Council

With rising concerns about the impacts of global climate change, it is important that we monitor the health of ecosystems over large areas. Remote sensing from satellite or airborne sensors is usually seen as the most cost effective means of achieving this task. Professor Pete Mumby of the School of Biosciences has been awarded £286,274 by the Natural Environment Research Council to develop a generic model of aquatic remote sensing and the incorporation of ecological scenarios using Bayesian statistics.

Maritime Ethnography of the Arabian Gulf and the Red Sea

Professor Dionisius Agius has received a major grant from the Golden Web Foundation for a project entitled MARES: Maritime Ethnography of the Arabian Gulf and the Red Sea: People, Trade and Hajj. The project will have studentships and postgraduate researchers attached, and will run from 2008-2011. The project will examine the material culture and history of maritime activities in the Arabian Gulf and the Red Sea.

Substantial grant from the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC)

Professor Annie Pye from the Centre for Leadership Studies has successfully obtained a substantial grant from the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) to study how small groups of people lead large, complex companies. Professor Pye's research will focus on directors (both executive and non-executive) of FTSE-listed companies, through a two-and-a-half year study commencing in April 2008. This is the third in a unique series of inter-linked, ESRC-funded studies that Professor Pye has conducted – the first was in 1987-1989, the second in 1998-2000 – charting changes in the responsibilities, roles and rhetoric of company leadership. The grant will fund a research team to include two experienced research fellows (with financial and/or legal expertise)able to conduct and interpret interviews with very senior business people.

Oral traditions of Cornish families

The oral traditions of Cornish families are to be recorded and preserved thanks to a grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF). An award of £45,600 will explore the ways in which communities throughout Cornwall relate to the past through family storytelling. The University of Exeter’s Cornish Audio Visual Archive (CAVA) will be leading a team of volunteers taking part in this innovative Cornish studies project.

EERA Best Paper Award for Postgraduate and Young Researchers

Nasser Mansour, a research fellow who recently completed his PhD in Education, has been awarded the European Educational and Research Association (EERA) Best Paper Award for Postgraduate and Young Researchers. This prestigious award was for his thesis ‘Religious beliefs: A hidden variable in the performance of science teachers in the classroom’. Nasser is Egyptian and lectured in Science Education at Tanta University in Egypt prior to moving to England for postgraduate study. His winning paper focused on the challenges for Islamic cultures to manage the relationship between providing a religious and science education that may be at odds with each other. Controversial issues like evolution, cloning and abortion can pose problems for teaching science. The paper also highlights the need to understand teachers’ personal religious beliefs and practices around some of these issues and the way their beliefs influence their performance in the classroom.